– October 1610) was an English knight and landowner, born in Wiltshire, the son of Sir Robert Long and his wife Barbara Carne.
Long was a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, (Raleigh's brother Carew had married Long's mother-in-law, widow of the first Sir John Thynne of Longleat), and according to historian John Aubrey, Long was the first in the country to introduce the fashion of smoking tobacco, his friend Raleigh being the first to bring it to England.
Aubrey also alludes to Sir Walter Long's ostentatious lifestyle, saying he kept a trumpeter, and on at least one occasion, he rode to Marlborough with thirty servants and retainers.
Long was the last of the family to own both manors of South Wraxall and Draycot together, and through the contrivances of his second wife Catherine, Sir Walter disinherited his son John from his first marriage, in favour of Walter, the eldest son from the second, but a compromise later led John to receive the estate at South Wraxall, and his half-brother received Draycot.
[2] There were at least thirteen children from his second marriage, including: Another legend related by Aubrey, concerns a promise made by Catherine to her husband on his death-bed, that she would not remarry, but she soon afterwards married Sir Edward Fox, which as the story goes, caused the portrait of Sir Walter to fall from the wall the moment the bride and her new husband entered the room.